Saturday, 22 October 2016

The late national hero and former Midlands governor, Cephas Msipa lived a
modest life and believed in fairness such that he paid compensation to
the white farmer, whose land he occupied during the land reform
programme, Midlands provincial affairs minister, Jason Machaya has
revealed.

Msipa took over Cheshire, a commercial dairy farm, 10km on the outskirts of Gweru along Matobo Road from Graham Ingle in 2005. The farmer also produced flowers and passion fruit for export at the 2 100-hectare farm.

Machaya said at first Msipa owned a small farm in Zvishavane and it
was the Zanu PF leadership in the province, which persuaded him to
acquire a better farm (Cheshire).

“We told him (Msipa) that the farm along Matobo Road was near Gweru
and after work, he could easily access it,” he said yesterday at
Msipa’s memorial service at Cecil John Rhodes Primary School grounds in
Gweru.“He (Msipa), at first refused, saying he was comfortable with his
small piece of land in Zvishavane and did not want to appear greedy in
the eyes of the public. We persuaded him and when he agreed reluctantly,
he later called me and said he wanted to compensate the farm owner.”Machaya said Msipa entered into an agreement with the ex-farm owner
and applied for a loan from a bank, which he used to compensate him.He said when the number of students on the CG Msipa Scholarship Trust
increased, the late hero applied to the Local Government ministry for
authority to sub-divide part of the farm into residential stands to
raise funds for the scholarship.“He told me that since he could not turn away disadvantaged students,
he would not want to burden traditional sponsors like Unki and Mimosa
mines and other individuals and had decided to sub-divide the farm into
residential stands for sell to raise funds for the scholarship,” he
said.“I asked him if he was not giving away his farm, but he said it did
not matter, as it was for a good cause and every cent of that project
was channelled towards the scholarship fund.”In December 2013, during a visit by Agriculture, Mechanisation and
Irrigation Development deputy minister Paddy Zhanda, Msipa defended his
position to keep the few white dairy farmers in the province.“It is in the national interest that I said these dairy farmers
should remain on their farms. We don’t have to import milk when we have
people who are productive. It does not matter whether one is white or
black; what we want is development,” Msipa said then. newsday